I love it when opposites overlap, when there's suddenly a tangent of common ground; when environmentalists work together with timber companies, when luddites work with technology, when a nemesis suddenly becomes an ally towards a common goal. In the same spirit I find myself strangely aligned with the religious right in these pre-christmas days... against the cultural invasion of consumerism—or as they say, secular consumerism.
"None of us like Christmas," says McKinley sitting around with some of his pastor friends, adding, "That's sort of bad if you're a pastor." Instead of helping their congregations focus on the season of Advent and prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, the pastors found themselves competing with a secular consumerism that made December the hardest time to make their message heard.
(from an article on yahoo about Advent Conspiracy)
I like Christmas. I like all celebrations with a good story. I'm not religiously affiliated in any way. Mostly because I believe that choosing a religion runs counter to being religious, since all religions implicitly—if not explicitly—state that they're the best (or worse, the only choice). This is the cause of much divisiveness, intolerance and persecution, running quite counter to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Muhammed...
What I do believe in is the all inclusive kingdom, the five kingdoms of life that work together as one.
Our christmas tree this year celebrates one of these kingdoms, the kingdom of fungi, for contributing to life as we know it.
The fungi kingdom is the kingdom that keeps all other kingdoms in circulation by breaking down matter, and making it freely available for the continuous reanimation of life.
Ever wonder what happens to all those christmas trees after they've served their short and symbolic purpose?
Unless burned it'll be fungi that breaks the tree down into its constituent elements making them available for use in the next life cycle. True reincarnation at work!
So yeah, we're just getting a head start this year... plus we like our fungus edible. Mmmmmm, shitakes.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
kingdom come
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Horse Training Fire Snake Taejon Ride
HORSE TRAINING
imagination, the best toy (that's not Lilly, unless of course it's Lilly the Horse...)
FIRE SNAKE
TAEJON PARK RIDE
Monday, January 26, 2009
GOOD LUCK!
Did you know that dragons eat lettuce? It's true, here's evidence, tell your kids, it's what really works if you ever want to breath fire like real dragons do when you grow up...
We walked down across the wind swept bridge amidst snow flurries. If it were up to CP, we'd probably still be down there, watching them bless every single business in the ID... so exciting, dancing dragons drums and firecrackers
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
mid December
I think we ate Shitakes for two weeks straight... made a little 'green'house (not much green, mostly brown) last month, for that December harvest...
That whiteness on top of the alder log are shitake spore droppings. Thousand and thousands of 'em.
Took advantage of the first snow to remove the wasp nest (second one this year) in the backyard, a seven story hive that saw a constant stream of activity when it was still warm out. 
oh, and here's one more pic, port of seattle, that I took scouting around for an appropriate (i.e. incidental and improvised) back drop for some video work (see below, 4ourX5ive) -
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
4ourX5ive
a trial run posting...
The initial impetus being that I wanted to incorporate my video work into my design site. I wanted a more creative approach than the standard one-video-at-a-time presentation. Part of the consideration was also the time factor. Video's take time and if someone's flipping(clicking) through several portfolios or doesn't have much time to watch, this could render the video(s) rather ineffective. So I came up with this grid of simultaneously looping videos, and that's where the work began... Everybody knows that videos take up a lot of bandwidth so it was equal amounts art and science to get 20 videos to play efficiently simultaneously.
For the geek-minded: the 20 vids weigh in at 2.34 MB; if you multiply that by 5 or 6, you'll end up with the size of your average YouTube music video... lean and mean for sure. Mean, as in meaning that is. Although initially unforeseen, after I first played it, I really liked the effect of a continual repetition that never repeats itself. The 20 loops are inherently repetetive, but since each loop is of a different length, when the images intersect at any given moment, the overall image is always different, potentially infinitely so (I'd need a mathematician to verify this).
While conceptually appealing on the one hand—not to discount the eye candy factor!—I could also see that playing 20 videos simultaneously may potentially be overwhelming, annoying even... voila the ENOUGH! button to clear the field with the (virtual)analog paintbrush...
I liked that you could obliterate a video with another video. There's a lot of untapped potential for digital video usage.
More geekness: Sounds were recorded, sequenced and implemented by me. Flash and as3 leave much to be desired when it comes to sound implementation... I learned the hard way (ideally I would have liked to have had the sound pause—rather than stop, and start from the beginning again—in the video section, but this proved impossible to do without glitches when working with looped sound). There's always those pesky browser issues too... one reason why I'm giving this a trial run here. Even to post this here I had to add some extra code to circumvent security issues, since the files reside on a different server than the one Blogger runs from... blah blah blah
Basically I did all the front end (design and visuals) and back end (buttons, navigation, controls; actionscripting—as3). If you want to know more, ask and I'll spill the beans. And rice. And sauce. And
Monday, December 1, 2008
thanksgiving
impromptu sidewalk art
This is the guy, Peter Yarrow, who along with a friend wrote "Puff the Magic Dragon" way back in 1959. I know dads who's favorite song this was back when they were kids... A great performer, still going strong. The place where this performance took place is his son's import/export store, and the woman with the mic is his daughter. It was a great place to see them - although that one kid who kept getting clocked by the guitar neck (about half way through vid) may not think so... - it was a tight squeeze up front.
Pre-Puff we ran into some carolers who quickly incorporated CP&E into their rendition of Rudolph. Solos left and right... a performance laden day for the kids.
